A working class disarmed
Second Amendment fetishism aside, there’s an old saying that the working class’s ultimate weapon is withholding labor through slowdowns and strikes. By that measure, the U.S. working class has been effectively disarmed since the 1980s. Here’s a graph of the annual number of work stoppages since 1950 (which includes lockouts as well as strikes—unfortunately, there’s no way of distinguishing between the two). They’re up from the recession low of 5—yes, 5—in 2009, but not by much: there were 15 in all of 2013. Between 1947 and 1979, the average was 303. (The… Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 